Thursday, July 12, 2012

At last! My new old desk and vanity arrived from the vast wasteland - somewhere - out there - and they got here safely. This desk is just absolutely wonderful. Built 1947-1949 by the Heywood Wakefield company, this is the "Kneehole Desk" M 315 W. I love it. I love it.

Here it is with the chair out of the way. That's my teeny-tiny paper shredder underneath it. I didn't want my little printer on top of it glomming everything up so I put it on a little box at the side which was built by AngelSpouse some years ago. It seems to work perfectly and there is an opening in the box on the wall side that hides all the cords. I hate cords. Unfortunately, they are mostly necessary.

As you can see, I'm not the only one who likes this desk. Hmmmm.... how can I fit in here?

Ahhhh! There we go. Perfect!

This vanity took absolutely forever to get here. At least it seemed that way. And even then I had to make a pattern of the top so that a piece of glass could be cut for it. My pattern wasn't the smoothest in the world and the glass people cut the danged thing exactly by the pattern I made. This left the little crescent-shaped cutout at the front and center not as smooth as I would have liked - but hey! I have glass on my vanity and now it's fully useable.

This is the Heywood Wakefield "Riviera Vanity" M 186 and "Revolving Pouffe" M 187 made in 1947-1948.

You will notice that there used to be a crescent-shaped piece of glass that fit just in the center section of the vanity just beneath the level of the vanity top. But I decided I wanted the entire top protected by glass and so I had a single piece cut to cover it and give me a working surface at the same time.

I love this vanity. The only thing I don't love is the height. Way back in the "olden days" it seems that vanities were pretty low to the floor. This makes it just a little bit awkward for me so AngelSpouse is building me a set of risers for the feet to raise it by about 3 to 3 1/2 inches.

A closer look with the flash shows how well kept this piece has been through all these years.

And a view without the flash gives a truer picture of the actual lovely champagne color.

All my "beauty junk" has been moved into the drawers; makeup, nail polishes and do-dads, and my perfumes and colognes. Don't I just feel ritzy sitting there now with my own space to do all those girly things that girly-girls do?

These pieces are so pretty I can't wait to finish this post so I can go see how it looks. This is my nostalgic voyage into the past. As I admire these Mid-Century Modern pieces I wonder who first owned them and what their lives were like. I wonder who sat before the mirror and if she admired herself there before her senior prom or before her wedding. I wonder who used the desk. A business person? An artist? A student? I'll never know, but it's fun to wonder about and to imagine they were happy and had good lives.